Colonial Administration

The expansion of a colonial administrative apparatus and bureaucracy
paralleled the economic reorganization. The viceroyalty was divided into
audiences (
audiencias), which were further subdivided
into provinces or districts (
corregimientos) and finally municipalities,
which included a city or town, governed by town councils cabildos), composed of the most prominent citizens, mostly encomenderos
in the early years and later hacendados.

The most important royal official was the viceroy, who had a host of
responsibilities ranging from general administration (particularly tax
collection and construction of public works) and internal and external
defense to support of the church and protection of the native
population. He was surrounded by a number of other judicial,
ecclesiastical, and treasury officials, who also reported to the Council
of the Indies, the main governing body located in Spain. This
configuration of royal officials, along with an official review of his
tenure called the residencia, served as a check on viceregal power.

In the early years of the conquest, the crown was particularly
concerned with preventing the conquistadors or encomenderos
from establishing themselves as a feudal aristocracy capable of
thwarting royal interests. Therefore, it moved quickly to quell the
civil disturbances that had racked Peru immediately after the conquest
and to decree the New Laws of 1542, which deprived the encomenderos
and their heirs of their rights to native American goods and services.

The early administrative functions of the encomenderos over
the indigenous population (protection and Christianization) were taken
over by new state-appointed officials called correqidores
de indios (governors of Indians). They were
charged at the provincial level with the administration of justice,
control of commercial relations between native Americans and Spaniards,
and the collection of the tribute tax. The corregidores
(Spanish magistrates) were assisted by curacas, members of the
native elite, who had been used by the conquerors from the very
beginning as mediators between the native population and the Europeans.
Over time the corregidores used their office to accumulate
wealth and power to dominate rural society, establishing mutual
alliances with local and regional elites such as the curacas,
native American functionaries, municipal officials, rural priests (doctrineros),
landowners, merchants, miners, and others, as well as native and mestizo
subordinates.

As the crown's political authority was consolidated in the second
half of the sixteenth century, so too was its ability to regulate and
control the colonial economy. Operating according to the mercantilistic
strictures of the times, the crown sought to maximize investment in
valuable export production, such as silver and later other mineral and
agricultural commodities, while supplying the new colonial market with
manufactured imports, so as to create a favorable balance of trade for
the metropolis. However, the tightly regulated trading monopoly,
headquartered in Seville, was not always able to provision the colonies
effectively. Assadorian shows that most urban and mining demand,
particularly among the laboring population, was met by internal Andean
production (rough-hewn clothing, foodstuffs, yerba mate tea, chicha
beer, and the like) from haciendas, indigenous communities, and textile
factories (
obrajes). According to him, the value of
these Andean products amounted to fully 60 to 70 percent of the value of
silver exports and elite imports linking Peru and Europe. In any case,
the crown was successful in managing the colonial export economy through
the development of a bureaucratic and interventionist state,
characterized by a plethora of mercantilistic rules that regulated the
conduct of business and commerce. In doing so, Spain left both a
mercantilist and export-oriented pattern and legacy of
"development" in the Andes that has survived up to the present
day, and which remains a problem of contemporary underdevelopment.